


Outrages So Hideous

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Dark Harry Potter, Drama, Gen, Horror, Mentions of Rape, Minor Character Death, Murder, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry knows that everyone would be disappointed in him. Hell, he’s disappointed in himself. But he just doesn’t see any other way to change the rotten structure of wizarding society.





	Outrages So Hideous

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics. The title of the fic comes from the book _Mindhunter_ by John Edward Douglas.

****“Serial murder may, in fact, be a much older phenomenon than we realize. The stories and legends that have filtered down about witches and werewolves and vampires may have been a way of explaining outrages so hideous that no one in the small and close-knit towns of Europe and early America could comprehend the perversities we now take for granted. Monsters had to be supernatural creatures. They couldn't be just like us _.”_ -John Douglas, _Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit._

*

Harry knows that his parents would be disappointed in him. Sirius. Dumbledore. Hermione, most of all. Snape would maybe nod in satisfaction at having his guess proved right, but Harry doesn’t really think so. None of what he suspected Harry of had anything to do with this, after all.

But they can’t be more disappointed in Harry than he is in himself.

*

“They really do think those deaths are all connected?” Ron glances up from the Potions book he’s reading for new prank ideas. George seems content to leave that to him lately, maybe because the last time he brewed an experimental potion at home, little Fred got into it and spent a day sick. George isn’t going to do anything that risks his children’s lives.

“Yes.” Hermione is staring down at the _Prophet_ , her face green. “But on the other hand, they only have the fact that all the deaths are of former Death Eaters or Voldemort collaborators to link them. The victims died in all these different ways.” She swallows and glances up at Ron over the rim of the newspaper. Her eyes are bloodshot, Ron’s displeased to note. “Umbridge—exploded. But Lucius Malfoy died of a heart attack in his sleep, and Ignatius Parkinson choked on his own vomit, and Cornelius Fudge—”

“Yeah.” Ron winces. Fudge’s death was right before he quit the Aurors to help George in his shop, and Ron had to see the body and was minimally involved in the case. Fudge looked like some giant beast tore him apart. His body was actually split into three almost-equal sections, and his intestines and organs draped everything in the room. Ron isn’t going to forget the sight of Fudge’s heart cradled in a delicate crystal dish on his counter that was probably used for sweets any time soon.

“So it might be one killer, but why would he kill them all different ways?” Hermione asks, draping her hair behind her neck. Her hand doesn’t release its hold on the _Prophet_.

Ron gets up and goes around behind the couch, gently massaging her shoulders, and not answering until he feels some tension drain from her muscles. “Because he doesn’t want anyone to catch him?” The answer seems obvious to him.

“That’s the point, though, Ron! I’ve been doing some reading in Muggle books on serial killers—”

“Of course you have.” Ron leans over to kiss the nape of her neck.

He gets a small smile, but Hermione says, “Shut up, Ron, this is serious. Muggle serial killers can change some things about the way they kill, but not everything. There’s usually a piece of the crime scene that has to stay the same for them to get their satisfaction out of it. And if they didn’t get _some_ sense of satisfaction, they wouldn’t go on killing, would they?”

Ron has to shake his head. “No, that makes sense.”

“So.” Hermione stares at the _Prophet_ with bleak eyes again. Ron carefully averts his own gaze. He doesn’t want to see the explosion that tore out of Umbridge’s stomach and left her deceased all over the Ministry Atrium again. “Where’s the signature here? What has to stay the same? It doesn’t seem like _anything_ is staying the same. Some victims die in their sleep, some die violently, and Umbridge actually died in _public_ , with no one near her. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Do you have to?” Ron asks. “I mean, you also told me that all those Muggle killers slip up sooner or later. You’re not an Auror. You don’t have to catch them.”

“Him,” Hermione corrects absently. “Almost all killers like this are male. Maybe I don’t have to, but I _want_ to, Ron. I want to keep the world safe again. And this isn’t the way to heal the wounds from the war, no matter what this person may think.”

“Well, he’s getting more and more daring, it looks like to me,” Ron says, as he plucks the paper from Hermione’s hands and folds it down so he doesn’t have to see the picture. “That means he’s taking more risks. He’ll get sloppy, and they’ll catch him.”

Hermione sighs and then really relaxes back into Ron’s massaging hands with a murmur of, “I hope you’re right.”

*

Harry has standards. He never plants evidence. (He remembers Sirius). He always tries to do things the legal way first, and that’s only after a strict investigation. Some people he might despise, like Draco Malfoy, but there’s no indication that they turned back to blood purity or crime after the war. Draco seems content to just take endless holidays in Paris and romance some Slytherin witch named Astoria Greengrass. Harry can safely ignore him.

But his father was donating money towards Ministerial candidates who planned to campaign for exiling Muggleborn students from the wizarding world. Lucius Malfoy served some time in Azkaban and more under house arrest. He learned nothing.

Harry had everything: owls in Lucius’s own handwriting about his plans, confessions from the people he bribed, Pensieve memories of an undercover Auror who pretended to be sympathetic to the cause meeting Lucius, even documents about transactions in accounts outside Gringotts that showed the flow of money from Lucius to the candidates.

And Lucius _walked_. Because he paid yet more bribes.

Harry couldn’t let that stand.

*

“They’re calling him the Quiet Killer, did you know?”

“No, I didn’t,” Ron replies, hanging his cloak up on a peg and kicking off his boots. He’s had a long day at the shop, especially since George decided to test out a variety of Peruvian Darkness Powder that causes permanent blindness without the antidote—and _didn’t_ inform him. “Why? Some of those deaths are loud enough.”

“They can’t figure out how he’s doing it.” Hermione is pacing back and forth in front of the kitchen table. Ron smiles a little when he sees the lasagna and soufflé that his mum sent over. She’s kind to do that when both of them are too tired to cook. “I mean, _how_ did he cause Umbridge’s death in public like that, without being near her?”

“But that’s obvious, right?” Ron gets plates and forks and knives, and sits down at the table to cut himself some lasagna.

“No.” Hermione has gone still. “What do you mean, it’s obvious?”

“If he caused Umbridge’s death when he wasn’t near her, then either it was a time-triggered curse that got placed on her beforehand, or it was a potion.”

Hermione sits down hard in her chair on the other side of the table. “Why didn’t I think of that?” she whispers. “Of course. If you added a bit more powdered moonstone to the Bowels-Clearing Potion…”

“It clears the bowels right out!” Ron says, and then ducks as Hermione tries to swat him across the table. “Sorry. Anyway, I probably only thought about that because I’ve been reading nonstop about potions now that George has decided to keep them out of Fred’s reach.”

Hermione’s smile gets that little tinge of sadness it always does when one of them mentions Fred’s name. Ron has to look down into his plate for a minute while Hermione serves herself.

“Well,” Hermione says, after they’ve eaten a bit. “But I don’t know how some of the deaths could have been caused by potions. The heart attack Lucius Malfoy suffered, maybe. But the others? It _had_ to have been a beast that killed Fudge. Or an Animagus.”

“Not necessarily.” Ron rolls his eyes when Hermione gives him a stern look for talking with a full mouth. _She’s_ the one who keeps bringing up disgusting methods of death while they’re eating. “If someone could make a variation on a potion that killed Umbridge and it wasn’t obvious, why couldn’t they invent something else that did whatever happened to Fudge?”

“It would take a Potions genius…” Hermione trails off. “We’re sure that Professor Snape got buried, right?”

Ron snorts. “Yes. I am. I checked he was dead myself before the burial. Twice.”

“ _Ron_! You said that you wanted to pay your respects.”

“And I was. Making sure that the bastard was really getting final ones.”

Hermione rolls her eyes, but they’ve been married five years now, and she knows when it’s useless to scold him. They eat for a little while in silence, and then Ron says, as he puts the soufflé aside, “You didn’t tell me why they’re calling him the Quiet Killer.”

“Because they can’t find a trace of his presence,” Hermione says, and takes a few more bites. “Not just with Umbridge. There’s no trace of anyone near Malfoy, or Parkinson, or Fudge. They should have found _something_. If you’re right about the potions, they should have found some way that the killer could have introduced them to their systems. Maybe he sent them sweets or a letter with the potion smeared on the parchment. But no, they can’t find anything. And he’s silent about his own goals, too. A lot of these killers would brag to the papers, or to someone who could go to the Aurors. But not him.”

Ron nods thoughtfully. “That is a problem. And the potions theory is only a theory, remember, Hermione. It doesn’t prove anything.”

“It’s a good one.” Hermione reaches across the table and squeezes his hand gently. “I just wish that we could solve this.”

Ron doesn’t consider that his job anymore, but for Hermione’s sake, he massages her knuckles with his thumb and says, “Me, too.”

*

Parkinson was kidnapping and raping girls in the Muggle world, using his magic to make sure that all witnesses who could have seen something were Confunded or _Obliviated_. And he was pushing forwards legislation in the wizarding world that would have reduced werewolves to little more than zoo exhibits.

Harry found a witness Parkinson had missed. He brought her to the Ministry, and it turned out that, because she had a distant cousin who was a Squib, she already knew about magic and was willing to testify.

The Aurors refused to talk to her.

Because she was a Muggle, they said. Harry pointed out the precedent for talking to Muggles in cases of Muggle-baiting, because otherwise most of the time they would never know what went on.

The Aurors simply shook their heads and smiled at Harry and said that he’ll understand when he’s older.

Because he’ll have taken some bribes himself by that time, is what the smiles imply. Because he’ll have given up on radically changing things and confine himself to shutting down the most offensive outrages against common sense and decency.

Harry doesn’t intend to stop caring. He doesn’t intend to stop refusing bribes.

He doesn’t intend to stop.

*

“There’s a new victim.”

It takes Ron a long moment to wrench his eyes away from the letter Mum sent him, announcing that Fleur is pregnant with her and Bill’s third child (and heavily implying that Ron and Hermione should get a move on). “What?” he asks, as Hermione walks through the Floo and dumps her cloak on the floor.

“The Quiet Killer. He killed again.” Hermione is breathless, her hair frizzing out around her head as she comes over to him and sits down on the couch across from him. “This time he killed Rodolphus Lestrange in Azkaban.”

“ _Azkaban_?” Ron gapes at her. “I mean, Death Eaters and other people in Azkaban die all the time. Are they sure it’s him?”

“Yes.” Hermione clenches her hands. “Unless you think that Death Eaters in Azkaban regularly get poisoned by snakebites.”

“Snakebites? Really?” Ron shakes his head. “I suppose my potions theory is rubbish, then. I don’t know of any potion that conjures snakes.”

“Yes,” Hermione says, and slumps back against the couch, her face desperately unhappy.

“What is it, love?” Ron asks as gently as he can. He thinks about stepping behind her to massage her neck again, but usually Hermione only puts up with that when she’s close to going to sleep anyway. Right now it’s the middle of the afternoon and she’s clearly too agitated to sleep. “Why did this hit you so hard?”

“I thought we were getting back to normal after the war,” Hermione murmurs, bowing her head so that her hair falls around her face. “I mean, yes, some people were still prejudiced and some didn’t spend enough time in Azkaban, but we could _fight_ them. Voldemort is gone. The pure-bloods don’t have much power anymore. This Quiet Killer is going around slaughtering people, and he’ll stir up resentment and make our side look bad.”

Ron ends up sitting on the couch next to her, hugging her, and making soothing noises. But he doesn’t exactly speak up in support of her, because he can’t. He doesn’t think Hermione is right about the Quiet Killer making their side look bad. Not if George’s vicious smile when he heard about Malfoy’s death and all the people discussing Umbridge’s deserved end in low voices in the shop are any indication.

If anything, the Quiet Killer is doing what many people wish they could.

*

Umbridge was never charged.

Harry couldn’t believe that, in particular. There was so much testimony of what she did during the war, including torturing Muggleborns with the Cruciatus Curse, that he thought for sure she would be tried and convicted. He considered it so likely that he was actually focusing more on the Death Eaters who got captured later.

But it turned out that, well, charging Umbridge would mean charging so many _other_ people who worked in the Ministry during the war and collaborated with Voldemort’s government. It would be hard. It would be confusing. It would involve “innocent” people whose “only” crime was being under the Imperius Curse.

“But, sir,” Harry pointed out to Kingsley Shacklebolt with as much control as he could, “Umbridge admits she wasn’t.”

Kingsley sighed. “And other people claim she was. We have to accept some of the claims, Harry, or the really innocent people who _were_ under that curse, like Pius Thicknesse, will have their defenses affected.”

“You know as well as I how foul Umbridge is, Kingsley.” Harry shoved his hand forwards, across the desk in Kingsley’s office, so the man would have no choice but to read “I must not tell lies” branded on the back of it. “How can you ignore her crimes like this?”

“I know, but we simply have bigger game right now, Harry.” Kingsley gave him an apologetic look before he turned back to the papers in front of him. “Including making sure that innocent people aren’t tried. I have more interest in setting free the innocent than punishing the guilty.”

“I would, too, if there was some kind of guarantee that the guilty people weren’t going to just turn around and punish the innocent again as soon as they can catch them!”

Kingsley only shook his head, dismissing the complaint, and, a moment later, Harry from his office.

Umbridge has carried on being foul since the war: bragging about what she got away with, refusing to surrender the wands that she personally took from Muggleborns, spouting the pure-blood nonsense propaganda that Muggleborns stole wands and magic from pure-bloods.

Harry chose the manner of her death carefully. If she died in public, and violently, spilling her guts as she never did when alive, then of course people would be more likely to remember it.

And if some of the people who think like Umbridge change their minds or back off…

It might mean he’ll have to do less of this.

*

“Do you have a moment, Mr. Weasley?”

Ron gapes at Kingsley Shacklebolt for a minute before putting down the handfuls of electrically-charged clay that he’s been trying to use to make joke pots. Not one of George’s more inspired ideas, he has to admit. “Of course, Minister. I’m sorry there isn’t anywhere to sit…” The product development room at the back of the shop is absolutely crowded with teetering piles of crates, paper, wood, more clay, sealed jars, boxes marked _Fragile_ , and what Ron happens to know is a genuine bear-trap.

“Don’t worry about it.” Kingsley’s smile is shadowed a little. “I wanted to talk to you about a conversation that now seems significant in light of Madam Umbridge’s death, although it didn’t at the time. Did you know Harry hated her?”

“Well, of course he did. I mean, she tortured him and other students when she was Headmistress, and she was one of Voldemort’s enthusiastic collaborators. I didn’t think this was news?”

“I suppose I never knew that it was so personal for him.” Kingsley spends a moment looking around the production room as though he thinks that the answer will step out from behind the boxes. “Did you know Harry wanted her charged for her crimes?”

“He said something about that to me. But—I mean, sir. Do you really think _Harry_ killed her?” Ron wants to laugh. “Harry’s a terrible liar! And he shows his emotions on his face all the time! How could he be the Quiet Killer?”

“I don’t know that Harry’s a killer.” Kingsley’s voice is quiet in contrast to Ron’s, flowing over the room and gentling Ron’s hilarity and making him think things that he doesn’t want to think. “But I do know that he was involved in the investigations of Lucius Malfoy and Ignatius Parkinson, and he had reason to hate Umbridge.”

“And Fudge?” Ron regards Kingsley with skepticism that he can’t hide. “Do you think he, what, sneaked another hippogriff into Fudge’s house and let it loose?”

Kingsley’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t know how he’s doing any of this. But we _do_ have to investigate him, given the links. And he was abused by Fudge as a child when Fudge refused to believe him about Voldemort and participated in that ridiculous smear campaign against him and that equally ridiculous hearing. Would Harry kill for that?”

Ron doesn’t have to think about that. “No. He wouldn’t. That’s the thing, sir. Harry’s ridiculously forgiving. He practically gets along with Malfoy now—Draco, I mean. And he was a git to Harry all through school. Harry forgave Professor Dumbledore for never telling him that he would need to march to his death beforehand. He’s even talked about naming one of his kids Albus Severus when he has them! And you know what Professor Snape did to him.”

Kingsley frowns for the first time. “Yes, I have to admit, that’s what’s been bothering me about this. Besides the fact that Harry’s not a good liar, I mean. It doesn’t seem like him to kill his personal enemies. He didn’t even murder Voldemort, not truly. Why would he do this out of some personal grudge?”

“He wouldn’t,” Ron says. “And Rodolphus Lestrange? He doesn’t fit the pattern, either. He tortured Neville’s parents, not Harry’s.”

But even as his mouth runs, Ron is thinking. Harry can forgive his personal enemies all he likes. But he was ready to murder Sirius Black for betraying his _parents_. He cast the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow, and tried it on Bellatrix Lestrange, for what they did to Professor McGonagall and Sirius, not for what they did to him. He told Hermione specifically that he hasn’t forgiven Malfoy for calling her a Mudblood, because that’s Hermione’s to forgive or not at all.

He killed the diary shade when it threatened Ginny. He was ready to die to prevent Voldemort from stealing the Stone, and Quirrell _did_ die. And the Lestranges tortured Neville’s parents into insanity, and Harry and Neville have become good friends since the war ended.

“Ron?”

Ron comes back to himself and looks Kingsley in the eye. “I honestly don’t see how he could have done it,” he says. And he’s telling the truth on that. There’s still the problem of how Harry would have lied and kept this from everyone, and the problem of how he would have accomplished it. Potions? Leaving no trace of himself behind? Those aren’t things Harry is good at.

Fudge’s death doesn’t fit the pattern, either. Fudge’s crimes really were against Harry himself.

“Yes, well.” Kingsley stands. “We’ll have to investigate him, of course, and that’s probably going to be a shock and a disappointment to a lot of people. I did want to come here to warn you beforehand, as well as see what you knew.”

Ron shakes his head. “Harry is one of the best people I know. The Quiet Killer would have to be a madman, right?”

“If only because he obviously likes to see people suffering, yes.” Kingsley looks disturbed. “I suppose that’s another thing that puzzles me about this case. A madman this _obvious_ should be, well, obvious. Why can’t we find him?”

Ron has to shake his head again, and watches Kingsley out of the shop with a distinctly unsettled buzz in the back of his head.

But…it can’t be Harry, can it? How? _How_ would he be doing this? Why?

It takes what feels like forever for Ron to get back to work.

*

Fudge is an excellent example of someone who just doesn’t _learn_. Harry never would have paid attention to him in the first place if he hadn’t decided to stick his nose into politics again. There are plenty of other people more deserving of having targets painted on them.

But Fudge decided that he had to recover his reputation after the war. And he did it by loudly voicing his support for Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy. He gave interviews in which he said that he was sure they were innocent, that they had been under the Imperius Curse, and that they didn’t deserve prison time.

He was ineffective with Lucius himself; Lucius did serve prison time, after too many people saw him at the Battle of Hogwarts. But he’s the reason that the Averys, the Notts, the Crabbes, and several other pure-blood families don’t have any members in Azkaban, and he nearly got Walden Macnair set free before the Wizengamot got almost assaulted with Pensieve memories of him also participating in the Battle of Hogwarts.

Fudge worked to get Parkinson to walk. He’s responsible for the three rapes that Parkinson committed between the end of the war and now.

He’s responsible for the near-death of a half-blood girl that, apparently, Gregorian Goyle didn’t torture enough in a raid during the war and wanted to finish off. Now Gregorian is in Azkaban, but there’s a little girl bearing scars on her mind and body, and a wooden leg, who wouldn’t have borne those things if Fudge hadn’t made a speech in front of the Wizengamot about how Gregorian was an “innocent” led astray by Voldemort.

Harry thinks it’s poetic that Fudge died looking as if he was torn apart by a hippogriff. After all, he was perfectly willing to stand aside at one point and let Buckbeak be executed.

That’s not what happened, of course. But Harry knows that many people think so.

*

Ron stares in silence at the last, thick pages of the Potions book, which were stuck together. Apparently the book got more than one experimental draught poured on it when George and Fred—not little Fred—first opened the shop.

There are three potions Ron read about in close succession that are making the buzz in the back of his head, present since Kingsley told him about the inquiry into Harry surrounding Umbridge’s death, worse and worse.

One is a potion that turns the blood in a wizard’s body against him. It’s meant for cleansing purposes most of the time, to burn out an infection as quickly as possible, but there’s a cautionary note saying that in experimental cauldrons, it can cause organs to explode and the body to collapse as if severed.

Another is a poison that waits invisibly in the stomach until the victim next eats a full meal. Then it makes them, at one and the same time, vomit and incapable of actually ejecting the vomit through their mouths. They inevitably choke to death on it. Of course, the ingredients were banned centuries ago.

And there’s a third, one that makes the victim hallucinate the animals he most fears. Another cautionary note says that, while most of the time this is a harmless prank potion, if the victim is left alone long enough and doesn’t take the antidote, the “animals” might inflict fatal damage. Essentially, the victim’s own mind and magic control his body into manifesting the wounds.

_Was Rodolphus Lestrange afraid of snakes?_

Ron closes his eyes. The thing is, if Fred and George had a copy of this book, then it’s probably common. Anyone could find those potions and use them. It doesn’t _have_ to be Harry. And just because Fred and George had this book doesn’t mean they would ever have brewed those potions, or at least not the harmful varieties. So Harry could possess it and not use them, either.

_Harry isn’t even that good at Potions. The only reason he impressed Slughorn so much in sixth year was having the Half-Blood Prince’s book._

Ron feels his breathing calm down. Yes, of course that’s the truth. It would require a Potions genius to experiment and find the way to make these potions deadly, some of them. And there’s still the problem of how Harry would even get the potions into the victims in the first place. Most of them have to be ingested, although the Bowel-Clearing Potion that Ron suspects was manipulated to murder Umbridge could have entered the bloodstream through the skin. Harry wasn’t anywhere _near_ those people when they died. Hell, three times—the evenings that Malfoy and Fudge died, and the day that Parkinson choked to death on his vomit—Harry was actually with _them_ , Ron and Hermione, in their house or in Diagon Alley with them, laughing and joking.

The Half-Blood Prince’s book burned in the fire that consumed the Room of Requirement.

Of course, it’s not as though Ron saw a burned copy or anything. But that makes sense. Fiendfyre destroys everything it takes.

It would have burned everything in that room. Professor McGonagall did say that the next time she tested the Room, it worked normally, but she never attempted to invoke the rubbish pile aspect.

There’s no reason to think…

Ron feels an uneasy prickling move up his spine. For some reason, the vision of Harry’s OWL results flashes before him. Harry got an Exceeds Expectations in Potions that year. And that’s _with_ five years of Snape’s horrible teaching and Harry not doing well on his essays.

Harry did take the NEWTS, in private, at the Ministry after the war, since he never returned to Hogwarts. Ron has no idea what his Potions score was.

 _Stop it,_ Ron tells himself, and puts the book down and away. _Tell Kingsley about the book and tell him you think it’s potions. But all the other problems still apply. How would Harry feed his victims the poison? How would he manage to conceal it? It would be a huge change in his personality. He’s with us, and he smiles and laughs like always._

_Harry doesn’t lie._

In the end, it’s the last argument that convinces Ron the most. Harry just _isn’t_ good at hiding when he’s angry. Sure, he talks a lot about his job and how much he hates gathering up the evidence and watching another posh pure-blood walk away unscathed, but he’s never seemed like the ball of seething hatred you’d have to be to commit these crimes.

It’s not him. It’s not Harry.

With relief at that, Ron goes back to sculpting his clay pots.

*

Rodolphus Lestrange, while he was free after the war and the Ministry was delaying the hunt for him because they had “more important things to do,” killed a Muggle family and hid in their house for five days. He slaughtered the children and tortured the mother to death. He did it casually, as Harry saw when he investigated the crime for himself. He’s the one who actually tracked down and caught Rodolphus.

He was never tried for the crime. Muggles just aren’t important compared to the charge of breaking out of Azkaban that he was brought in front of the Wizengamot for. And thanks to a quirk of the wizarding justice system, that charge replaced the original ones, including being a Death Eater and torturing the Longbottoms into insanity. Breaking out of Azkaban doesn’t carry a heavy penalty since it was an unprecedented achievement until Sirius did it. Rodolphus might have been released from Azkaban in seven or eight years.

Harry has no doubt that Rodolphus would survive them. There are no Dementors in Azkaban now, and he is—he _was_ —a stubborn, determined man, a loyal Death Eater. True, he probably would have murdered someone else when he left the prison and then been thrown right back in, but how many innocents have to die for the Ministry’s lack of caring? For one man’s non-existent chance at redemption?

Harry is glad that he died in fear.

And he’s glad that his ability to make friends with house-elves didn’t perish with Dobby. Kreacher is devoted to Harry. He can get in and out of houses, even heavily-warded wizarding ones, with little to no trouble. He can coat parchment with contact potions. He can duplicate the handy Healing spell Harry found that moves the potion directly into a victim’s stomach.

Wizards pay so little attention to house-elves. They abuse them. They don’t notice when an extra one visits the kitchens. They don’t even notice when the taste of their food is a little off, as long as the rest of it is rich enough.

Kreacher even visited the Room of Requirement for him, and procured a certain important book that, after all, did not burn when the room did. Although Harry’s certain that he would have accomplished his ends even without it, it’s nice to have. Some of Snape’s notes on totally unrelated potions have made his experiments proceed that much faster.

Combine that with the Black house at Grimmauld Place and its collection of Potions books, its stores of magically-Preserved ingredients that were banned centuries ago, and its absolute privacy…

Well. Harry isn’t surprised they haven’t caught him.

It makes him a little sad, sometimes, that even his best friends have such a settled image of him in their heads. _Everyone_ knows that Harry Potter wasn’t any good at Potions, because the Hogwarts Potions master hated him. _Everyone_ knows that Harry Potter explodes with anger and can’t lie to save his life.

On the other hand, it’s been very useful in his work, that image. Harry actually does prefer that people don’t remember how well he did in spite of all the odds on his OWLS, and how it only took a bit of help from the Prince to increase his performance in Slughorn’s class. He vastly prefers that they don’t know he took an Outstanding on his Potions NEWT.

He prefers that they don’t remember lying by omission is not the same thing as an outright lie. He never told anyone about the Dursleys, not outright, and not even the twins and Ron, who saw the bars on his window in the summer before second year, spent a lot of time confronting him about it. He doesn’t talk about the nightmares he suffers from and the despair he feels at the course wizarding society has taken since the war, and if he doesn’t mention it, it doesn’t come up.

The public wants to believe that their perfect little hero didn’t suffer much in the war, because it’s more convenient that way. His friends want to believe it because they want him to be happy.

Harry is aware that the investigation into Umbridge’s death is beginning to center around him. Maybe someday soon, the Aurors will storm Grimmauld Place and drag him off to force Veritaserum down his throat.

Then again, the legal protocols for getting use of Veritaserum approved are _so_ complicated. It’s part of the reason that so many Death Eaters stayed free, after both the first war and the second one.

And among the potions that Harry is learning how to brew well is the antidote to Veritaserum. He hasn’t perfected it yet, but who’s faster? Him, or the investigators in the Ministry who are also hampered by their own dislike of Umbridge and their inability to see him as who he really is? Kingsley is facing resistance launching this investigation at all.

Harry knows that his parents would be disappointed in him. Sirius. Dumbledore. Hermione, most of all.

He’s disappointed in himself.

But not enough to stop.

As to whether they will catch him…

Who knows? Not the Quiet Killer.

They will have to see.

*

“The Ripper was never caught, despite the fervent efforts of Scotland Yard, and his identity has remained a subject of intense speculation ever since. Like the “true” identity of William Shakespeare, the choice of suspects often reveals more about the people doing the speculating than it does about the mystery itself.” -John Douglas, _Mindhunter._

**The End.**


End file.
